Small islands urge deep CO2 cuts

GERMANY: Small island states have sharpened their calls for the rich to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, saying low-lying atolls risk being washed off the map by rising ocean levels.

An alliance of 43 island states, backed by more than a dozen nations in Africa and Latin America, urged developed countries at U.N. climate talks in Bonn on Thursday to cut greenhouse emissions by "at least 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020". "The scientific findings about climate change are frightening," M.J. Mace, a legal advisor to the Federated States of Micronesia who presented the demands at the March 29-April 8 meeting, told Reuters.

A group of leading researchers last month projected a quickening pace of sea level rise this century, of about a metre (3 feet) or roughly double the projections by the U.N. Climate Panel in 2007.The small islands had called at a U.N. climate meeting in Poznan, Poland, in December 2008 for cuts of "more than 40 percent" in industrialised nations' emissions by 2020. "Why would small island states be happy with a level of ambition that is going to destroy their countries?" Mace said.

The highest points of some Pacific, Caribbean or Indian Ocean states are only a few metres above sea level.

Many other nations, including China and India, have called at Bonn for at least 40 percent cuts by the rich.

Small islands range from Antigua to Vanuatu while other countries backing Thursday's call included Kenya, Tanzania, Argentina and Peru. BONN, Friday, Reuters